1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of communications networks and in particular, relates to devices, systems and methods for dynamically provisioning quality of service (QoS) on a communications network.
2. Background of the Invention
The need to implement quality of service (QoS) standards in mobile device communications networks is well known in the art. As mobile phones and mobile phone networks incorporate functions (i.e., email, SMS messages, VoIP, streaming multimedia, etc.) with wildly disparate transmission requirements, it has become apparent that standards need to be put in place on the communications networks carrying such traffic for these functions to work to the satisfaction of their users. QoS standards range from specific guarantees on the transmission of all data flows (i.e., guaranteed ranges on latency, delay, jitter, throughput, etc.) to a focus on more qualitative measures of the user experience. For example, a service provider may only implement a “best effort” protocol to forward data on their network, but by sufficiently “over provisioning” bandwidth on their network fulfill the communications needs of their users. Implementations of QoS occur through many different transmission protocols, including IntServ, DiffServ, etc. The QoS standards that are implemented in the communications network are specified in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between the user and the service provider. These SLAs typically take the form of different subscriptions the user may purchase, for example, “Premium”, “Regular”, “Budget”, etc., reflecting more or less stringent QoS requirements.
As the capabilities of mobile phones expand, the users of such devices, in some sense, are becoming more complex at the same time. The telecommunications industry has come to understand that a single user may adopt multiple “personas”, in terms of their communications requirements, depending on their current context (at home, at work, in their car, etc.). For example, a user at work may have very different communications requirements from the same user at home. For instance, the user at work may not be willing to tolerate transmission errors in a videoconferencing session that they would tolerate streaming a movie at home. Implementing the same QoS standards for all of the personas the user presents to the network means that the user may, in some contexts, not experience the network performance he/she needs, or that network resources that could have been used for more critical applications are tied up instead guaranteeing performance that the user neither needs nor wishes to pay for.
Implementations of QoS are still in their infancy. Thus, there is a need for communications networks to adapt the QoS standards implemented for a user based on the persona the user presents to the network.